Victor has left you, you have become a girl again, recovering a
tranquillity without pleasure and without pain, have you not?"

Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment.

"In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But still you would
rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in short, your marriage is
emphatically not a success?"

"Well--no, aunt. But why do you smile?"

"Oh! you are right, poor child! There is nothing very amusing in all
this. Your future would be big with more than one mishap if I had not
taken you under my protection, if my old experience of life had not
guessed the very innocent cause of your troubles. My nephew did not
deserve his good fortune, the blockhead! In the reign of our
well-beloved Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very
soon have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The selfish
creature! The men who serve under this Imperial tyrant are all of them
ignorant boors. They take brutality for gallantry; they know no more
of women than they know of love; and imagine that because they go out
to face death on the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all
consideration and attentions for us. The time was when a man could
love and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. I will
put an end to this unhappy divergence between you, a natural thing
enough, but it would end in mutual hatred and desire for a divorce,
always supposing that you did not die on the way to despair."

Julie's amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to her aunt.
She was surprised by her language, dimly divining rather than